Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/329

 INDIA 3i7 the third century a.d. ; and then about the sixth century, a great Hindu kingdom in the Deccan, the plateau of Southern India ; a kingdom which later split in two. The thou- a Thousand sand years between 500 B.C. and 500 a.d., and the Years. ensuing period in the south, are probably the era during which fusion between the Aryans and their predecessors was carried furthest. The completeness of the early conquest in the Indus and Ganges basins had already reduced the previous population to such a condition of serfdom that there was less tendency to amalgamation in that area, and it remained essentially the land of the Hindus, Hindustan, where Brahmans and Rajputs still maintain a claim to unsullied descent. Some considerable time before 1000 a.d. Buddhism was already disappearing before the later Hinduism, the corrupt offspring of the ancient Brahmanism with its ugly admixture Hinduism of demon worship and other superstitions borrowed established, from the old Dravidian populations ; the more readily, because Buddhism itself was suffering from corruptions. We have already seen how Islam made conquest of all Western Asia as well as of North Africa, and even of Spain, in the seventh and eighth centuries ; but though the Arabs did occasionally penetrate India's mountain barrier, there was no effective invasion till Mahmud of Ghazni's first great incursion in 1001 a.d., when that great captain found himself opposed by Rajput armies as passionately attached to their own Hindu creed as were his followers to Islam. Year after year Mahmud hurled his armies into the Punjab, ravaging and spoiling as far south as Somnath in Gujerat, but otherwise confining his operations to the lands 2 The watered by the Indus and its tributaries. He did Mohammedan not organise his conquest, beyond leaving garrisons Asce ndency. under military governors ; the Indian territory was only an out- lying province of his empire. But when his successors lost their dominions, they still for a time retained possession of the Punjab, in which there was now a military Mohammedan population of mixed Turks and Afghans, lording it over the Hindus whom they held in subjection. Towards the end of the twelfth century the Ghazni dynasty was finally overthrown by another Afghan dynasty, that of Ghor.